That's a very pessimistic view. Nintendo games will continue to look better and better with each generation just as all other games do. Mario Kart 8 blew minds when it was shown, but don't think for one second that graphical improvement is beyond possibility or Nintendo's skill.

We're not near any ceiling of potential. Nintendo's future games will look a lot better and require a lot more power.

Though even if what you said is true, and there isn't really much further to push mario games or other games of similair art style, you're limiting Nintendo to only making games with a certain art style. Metroid Prime 4, Bayonetta, Star Fox. There's plenty of games Nintendo have that don't use a style like this.

Well of course I want each Nintendo system to be significantly more powerful than the last (with the Switch being a necessary small step forward due to Nintendo's new vision), but certainly I couldn't care less that they remain behind the other two consoles.

I actually had a similar feeling to you with Odyssey with 3D World. I thought that game was incredibly gorgeous,especially given the hardware. I'm looking forward to seeing if Odyssey is a step above that game. There is always more potential for even Nintendo style games to look much better with extra power, but their games look great overall.

Even for their cartoon art styles, a bump in power does make a difference. Look at Galaxy compared to Odyssey. However, Galaxy still looks great today and is amazing to play, whereas a lot of 360/PS3 games don't look good at all anymore. There are exceptions of course (The Last of Us still looks amazing). Realistic styles just don't age as well.

Nah. People used to say that about Mario Galaxy in Dolphin, that "cartoon graphics peaked and dont have to look better", and then we get Mario+Rabbids and SMO. People just lack imagination of what will be possible in the future. Wait until Nintendo has PS5 level power. Something like 32GB ram and +10Tflopz. The jump will be like going from Mario 64 to Galaxy.

Ratchet on PS4 looks amazing, but it's still not CG quality yet.

Even PS5 won't be peak cg cartoon graphics.

Agree with this post.

Except for the shoes, eyes and fabric textures. CGI renders still can improve a lot. Compare the Ratchet and Clank movie to the game for instance. The visual prowess in that pretty low budget movie still far exceeds gameplay. Skip to the 3 minute mark in this (compressed) youtube video and the difference between cutscene and game play are pretty obvious.

https://youtu.be/TYMCGIwVUEg (insert movie didn't work)

Although Nintendo should be able to recreate these kinds of graphics on a Switch with 1.5TF.

Still love the look of Mario 64 but part of selling new games is showing more impressive graphics. As someone already pointed out realistic graphics date the hardware more than cartoon graphics. Just small improvements in realistic graphics seem to require a large bump in performance. Creating a more sophisticated physics engine so objects can be interacted with more realistically has large cpu requirements.

You wonder where the limit ends. Normal eyesight tends to focus in certain area's you look at, depending on distance. There may be graphics in the future optimised to give maximum resolution for human eyesight that improve on reality and is actually sharper and brighter overall with greater contrast than reality.

Not forgetting all the improvements in AI etc so that a Nintendo game actually has characters close to being self aware with more varied interaction with the player.

I'd say we are really only at the beginning of games and what they can achieve.

It seems like any time we see a great example of art or tech in a game, someone says new hardware advances aren't necessary.

Just because a game looks great, doesn't mean it can't look far better. Yes, Nintendo games tend to age well, because their art is stellar. They are the Pixar of video games. But imagine what Mario, Zelda and company could look like if they had Pixar film level visuals!

That's all you need ... a little imagination to see that what you are seeing in the present is only the tip of the iceberg. You are actually selling yourself and Nintendo short.

Nintendo games can look much better as they do from a technical perspective and even PS4's power in Nintendo's hands wouldn't be close to what is really possible in the future with Nintendo games.

But people won't have more fun with Nintendo games in 20 years as they have now just because of better graphics and I guess in 20 years a Mario with PS4's graphics would be still great fun and wouldn't age that horrible to get eye cancer^^

Okay, since everyone else is dealing with the technical and artstyle angles (and doing a very good job of doing so, I may add), I'll deal with another.

Specifically, that Mario is not Nintendo as a whole.

I can name quite a few Nintendo franchises that would definitely benefit from more powerful hardware - Xenoblade, Metroid (Prime), Pilotwings, Starfox, Pikmin. I'm sure that there are more first-party ones that I've missed.

Then, of course, there is the possibility that 3D Zelda would switch back to a more realistic artstyle in the future, but that's another discussion entirely.

Pikmin, Star Fox will look amazing on PS4++ hardware. The issue with things like Metroid and Xenoblade is they are relatively small franchises in actual sales. Nintendo is never going to spend a monstrous budget on par with Uncharted 4 on games like that, so the hardware is kinda moot because the budget needed to push the hardware to the limits isn't available.